CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S COMIC CHILDHOOD

Homelessness and loneliness were traumatic childhood experiences that Chaplin relived in his alter-ego screen character to great creative advantage. “Those days were the longest and saddest of my life,” he recalled. “One Saturday, after school, I came home to find no one there…the room looked grim…and its emptiness frightened me. I also began to get hungry…but no food was there. I could stand the gaping emptiness no longer, so in desolation I went out…when I returned, it was night…all I wanted was to get to bed…As I crept up the darkened stairs, hoping to get to bed unnoticed, Louise [his alcoholic stepmother] staggered out onto the landing. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ she said. ‘This is not your home…you’re not sleeping here tonight…Get out!’…[on another occasion] Louise received a visit from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and she was most indignant about it. They came because the police had reported finding Sydney and me asleep a three o’clock in the morning by a watchman’s fire. It was a night that Louise had shut us both out, and the police had made her open the door and let us in.”

Chaplin’s films (photos above) relived some of his boyhood experiences of homelessness and loneliness. Many of the film sets he built were faithful visual replicas of places where he had lived as a child. In modern Hollywood terms, Chaplin used special effects to create a virtual reality that allowed him to jog his memory. In literary terms, Chaplin’s film sets operated like a Proustian tea biscuit. In psychoanalytic terms, Charlie screened his screen memories. But any way you look at it, it worked. Somehow Chaplin managed to gain mastery over personal tragedy by transforming it into universal comedy with a message of hope, over and over again.

MODERN TIMES: THE LITTLE TRAMP FINALLY FINDS
A SIDEKICK AND BOON COMPANION PAULETTE GODDARD TO BRAVELY FACE AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
(CHAPLIN MADE THIS FILM DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION)